Is the tea party’s influence slipping?

The tea party’s influence is eroding quickly, critics say, just three years after it burst onto the national scene riding a wave of anger over stimulus spending.

By Tom McNiffManaging editor

They still draw 80 or so people to their weekly meetings at Berean Baptist Church, and they can still marshal volunteers to picket against President Barack Obama and the “liberal left” on Wednesdays on the downtown square in Ocala.

Yet the tea party’s influence is eroding quickly, critics say, just three years after it burst onto the national scene riding a wave of anger over stimulus spending.

A 2010 New York Times/CBS News poll found that although only 4 percent of Americans had ever attended a tea party meeting or donated money to the cause, 18 percent of the country called themselves supporters. The poll also found that only 18 percent of Americans had an “unfavorable” view of the tea party.

The poll was repeated a year later and found that the tea party’s unfavorable rating had climbed to 40 percent.

And while the tea party claims that its influence can be seen in election victories by conservative candidates across the nation, critics point to the fact that none of the tea party-backed candidates — Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum — was able to mount a strong challenge to Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination.

Michael Lind, a political historian and author, believes that, like MoveOn.org and Ross Perot’s Reform Party, the tea party is destined to fade into history.

“We’ll look back and all this will seem kind of silly to us,” Lind said.

Lind, who calls the tea party “radical,” said even many of the nation’s conservative leaders have distanced themselves from the movement, which is strongest in the South.

“Since Reagan,” he said, “the Republican Party has courted white Southerners as the base that allows them to put together national majorities. So they see the tea party as something they have to go along with, but frankly they’re embarrassed by it.”

The leaders of Tea Party Solutions in Ocala, however, say predictions of the tea party’s waning influence are liberal propaganda.

“I think we’re more influential today,” said Steve Hunter, president of the local tea party. “Today, we’re in every level of government.”

Hunter said tea parties are molding public policy on the local, state and federal levels and they’re vetting candidates for office. Indeed, leading up to this year’s primary elections, candidates for most local, state and congressional offices accepted the tea party’s offer to come and be vetted by the membership.

“We’re involved like we should have been our entire lives,” Hunter said. “If we had been involved like we are today, the country wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Mary Lynn Geisler of the local Tea Party Solutions group said the fact that national decision-makers still address the tea party’s concerns publicly is proof that the movement remains strong.

“When you have the government fearing the tea party, you are doing something,” Geisler said. “Because, believe me, if they didn’t think we were powerful, they wouldn’t be addressing our issues on every news channel.”

Tea Party Solutions founder Butch Verrando said the amorphous nature of the tea party makes it resilient. Because it isn’t a rigidly structured organization that follows a single set of rules and strategies, the individual tea parties are free to adapt to changing issues and concerns and remain relevant in their communities.

“If you cut up a starfish into 1,000 pieces, what do you get? You get 1,000 starfish because they regenerate themselves,” Verrando said. “That’s what the tea party is, a starfish organization.”

Still, Verrando worries about the local tea party organization’s survival, if not its relevance.

“Our group tends to be very old. We have not been able to attract young people. They tend to not be as well-educated and they don’t earn that much, so they aren’t affected as much as the older people.